If the economy is bad, and millions of brains out there, why not constructively use our brain power to help?

The situation and economy we are facing is pretty bad, hearing how bad the economy is doing, people losing jobs. We need jobs and such. The idea is that if couple of millions of us sitting at home, hundreds of thousands of us writting on ted. Why the government don't take advantage of the collective brain power, let the people to be a part of the progress for us to fix our own economy??
Just like how amazon used to pay home computer for their process power when it is on idle.... Brains are here, ideas are here, which can be turned into plans of building new business, hence more tax, more jobs.... only a structure is needed... why no organization, business or government really take advantage of this?? i really wonder

Mar 20 2012:
I really would like some opinion on this, if a country is made up of their citizen, then surely, citizens should be able to involved with government expenditure, economic development etc. And now the technology is here, we can create ideas and votes on them on this virtual environment, we can become a part of the process of shaping and contributing to a country. And maybe even our ideas can sparkle and bring us out from the economic downturn..... But why it has been so many years since the fiber optic age... still none of this type of collaboration, the closest we ever got to is Facebook, and even website like 9gag would listen to their users and change their settings and layout which affect their operation....

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